


Love (or adoration) in the face of defeat

by viridianova



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viridianova/pseuds/viridianova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moriyama falls in love with Riko, but nothing works out like he planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love (or adoration) in the face of defeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



It was love at first sight, or at least that was what Moriyama insisted. The rest of Kaijou was pretty sure that it was something more like "love at first desperation" (not that that was really a phrase at all.) No one else on Kaijou could even see what Moriyama Yoshitaka would see in a girl like Aida Riko, after all.

Moriyama knew that they were gossiping about him, too, but he didn't really care. Riko was a _girl_ , and more importantly, she was a girl who didn't have a member of the Generation of Miracles hanging around her all the time. Least of all one that they'd lost to, _fantastically_ (even if they'd lost to Shuutoku too, but they hadn't had Kise with them that time, and even if it was a little hard to admit, that was almost to be expected). Riko was more subtle, and she knew a lot about basketball, and he knew— he just _knew_ — that she smiled at him at the end of their Winter Cup match against Seirin. What else could that have meant? Everyone had always talked about how formidable Seirin's coach was, but Moriyama knew that he had just experienced a bit of her softer side. 

And now he was determined to expose a bit more.

* * *

It was a strange sort of mood shift— to have a member of their team so set on something in the wake of defeat. Kasamatsu and Kobori didn't even really have anything to do with the basketball club anymore— any sort of guilt that they might have had as the graduating seniors should have been alleviated. They had more important things to think about. Things like entrance exams for university, things like finishing the last of their carefree high school days as they wanted to.

Instead, Kobori and Kasamatsu (along with Kise, Hayakawa, Nakamatsu, and anyone else unfortunate enough to be called a member of the Kaijou basketball club) had been summoned to the Kaijou locker rooms, where Moriyama was trying to grill his teammates for dating tips.

"Kise, you're probably the one who's dated the most in this room, what do you think?"

Kise started grinning, and was about to open his mouth, but Kasamatsu nailed him in the back of the head with a ball before he could even get the start of a sentence out.

" _Kise_ , nothing you'd say would be helpful for a normal human being, so don't even try." The look on his face was irritated, at usual, but weirdly enough, he actually softened a little as he shifted his attention to Moriyama.

"Who's the girl you're after this time, anyways, Moriyama? Don't tell me it's one of the girls who was in the stands during our match again Seirin. You really wanna go after one of _those_?"

That was nearly enough to stop Moriyama in his tracks. 

"Well— not exactly. She wasn't in the stands?"

The entire room got eerily quiet.

"... Is the girl you want to ask out Aida Riko?"

He barely even had to nod before Kasamatsu pelted him with a ball of his own (to his _face_ , even, this time), and the whole locker room erupted into chaos.

* * *

After the "team meeting" had ended, Kise had approached him, though, with a bit of a sheepish expression on his face.

"Sorry that I couldn't give you any advice, senpai. I honestly think Kasamatsu-senpai would kill me again—" and there he pulled a bit of a belligerent face— "but I still think I can help you a little. I can give you Kurokocchi's mail address, alright?" He gave Moriyama a disarming grin, the kind of grin he must give to girls when he wanted to charm them, and grabbed the phone out of his hand. "Just tell him you want to meet Aida-san. Kurokocchi's a good person, I'm sure he'll help you out!"

And just like that, before Moriyama could even get a proper word in edgewise, Kise had already pulled his phone out of his hand and entered Kuroko's email in his address book, and walked off without another word.

* * *

`Kise-kun, may I ask why one of your teammates mailed me yesterday with a request for an "audience" with Aida Riko?`

`Ah! Go easy on him, Kurokocchi. We just lost to you, after all, and he told us all a very affecting story about how Aida-san smiled at him from the bench! I thought it was sweet, anyways. Just tell him to come to practice sometime?`

`Kise-kun, Aida-san isn't interested in dating.`

`Just let him try, okay?`

`Fine. I'll let him try.`

* * *

The whole thing had been rather less painful than Moriyama had been expecting. Kuroko had been nice to him (although it had taken him almost two whole days to get back to him, but maybe they'd been busy being the Winter Cup champions for this year), and had told him to come to whichever of their next practices he could attend. 

So obviously, he'd chosen to come to Seirin's practice the very next day, with the biggest (stupid) grin he could muster on his face, and the best clothes he'd managed to dig out of his closet the day before. It ended up looking a little bit laughable— and really, if Moriyama knew anything about Aida Riko besides being a girl, he probably would have realized that she was far from the type of girl who'd be impressed by something like that, anyways.

He approached the bench, where Aida Riko was fastidiously watching her team go through their drills. He couldn't even imagine how anyone on Seirin could focus with a girl staring at them like that all the time.

"Uh, Aida-san?" Fuck. Where had all those pick-up lines gone? All of those smooth sayings that he'd wanted to tell her this week about how her smile lit up his life and made everything worth living.

She didn't even look back at him.

"Moriyama Yoshitaka, Kaijou's #5, right?"

He paused. He couldn't think of what to say.

"Kuroko-kun said you had something to ask me?"

Silence. For a few more awkward moments before he finally spat out:

"Uh, I was wondering if you had any time on Sunday—"

Aida finally turned around, and she was _smiling_.

"Oh, is Kaijou asking for extra coaching from the Winter Cup winners?"

He was speechless. His tongue was trying to move but nothing was really coming out so he just nodded, and swallowed.

"Mm, well, if Takeuchi-san is alright with it, I wouldn't mind a joint practice. You guys really did us a favor with that practice match, you know. Tell him we said yes, alright?"

That smile again— the smile that had gotten him besotted with her in the first place.

"Yeah," he said, trying to hide his own grin. This was almost as good as a date. Probably as good as it would get right now.

"See you on Sunday."


End file.
